


and the world spins madly on

by anakatieskywalker



Series: Stephanie Brown, Third Robin [14]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Good Grandparent Alfred Pennyworth, stephanie and her brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29169945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anakatieskywalker/pseuds/anakatieskywalker
Summary: the years are not always kind to this patchwork family, but one thing remains constant even when it feels like everything has changed.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Alfred Pennyworth, Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne
Series: Stephanie Brown, Third Robin [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858975
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	and the world spins madly on

**Author's Note:**

> An AU where Steph's the third robin, the dead robin, and the resurrected robin. When Steph was resurrected, she was resurrected and trained by the League of Assassins. Takes place after Damian's death.

For two years, Stephanie’s brothers hurt. 

Jason and Dick don’t talk, the former can’t even look at Tim, and Damian doesn’t know how to tell anyone that he knew this girl from the pictures. He sees the memorial in the cave, the way Alfred looks when he leaves one of the few rooms in the manor that are forbidden, and he sees the picture with the blonde sitting by the window behind Bruce’s desk. 

For two years, Jason, Dick, and Tim all wake up wishing it had been them. None of them talk about it, and the anniversary of Steph’s death is a day where everyone is on their own.

•••••

The first year, Dick calls out of work sick, and doesn’t even get out of bed. A part of him wants to call Jason, wants to reminisce, but he knows the other man won’t answer his call. He hasn’t answered his phone when Dick called in a year, and as much as the older man might wish he would, Jason’s not going to break that streak today.

So Dick stays in bed for as long as he can, just thinking about the feisty little blonde they had all become so fond of. He wonders what she would have been like, what horrible jokes she would have made in the last year, and he smiles through the tears that stream down his face. 

That night, Dick still puts on his uniform, because that’s exactly what it is. A uniform, a piece of armor, a persona that he knows he has to keep. He’s a little quieter than normal, but he still fights with all his might, and does flips that are more than just a little bit excessive. And not that it’s anyone’s business, but a part of him could have sworn he heard the laugh of a familiar blonde for the first time in a year.

Dick Grayson reflects on a life that was too early lost, and the world spins madly on.

•••••

Jason wakes up on November 24th every year with a headache. He knows why, he’d spent the entire night prior running around the city and punching faces in until he was too tired to stand, and then he’d gotten drunk. He’s not twenty-one yet, but he’s never let that stop him. 

November 24th is the one day that the Red Hood doesn’t go out to bully other criminals and run a sophisticated drug trade. No one that works under him works either, for fear of what he would do if they did. They don’t know anything about what makes that day special, they just know that November 24th is a day dedicated to having the city be a little quieter.

Jason wakes up with a hangover and wishes he was dead, that instead of being at odds with his whole family and trying to carve a path he’d never have dared to dream up before. He wishes that he was the one that was gone, never to set foot in the cave or run along the rooftops again. 

Stephanie was his little sister, his protege. A part of him will always wonder what he’d done wrong, what he could have done to prevent it, besides refusing to give her the mantle. 

No, not giving her the mantle of Robin was never an answer that popped into his head. Steph was Robin, meant to have that legacy, to fly along the rooftops and feel also there could actually be good in the world thanks to her. She had been destined to be Robin just as much, if not more than he and Dick were.

Jason lays motionless in bed, and before he knows it, the night is there. The day is gone, and the world spins madly on.

•••••

Tim stands on a rooftop, late on November 24th. He never stops working, not on that day. Donations are made, papers are filed, and at night he works a little harder to punch the things that go bump in the night a little harder in the face. That first year, Bruce has just disappeared, or died, depending on who you ask. There’s chaos, the family is trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, and they’re still trying to mourn.

For just a few minutes, on that long, grueling night, he stands still. He stops, takes a breath, and looks to the stars that he can see through the smoggy Gotham night. The sky is clear, or just about as clear as it can get in Gotham, and a part of Tim thinks that the stars are shining a little extra bright. He knows that it can’t be true, he has a mind for science, not religion. He knows that Steph is dead and gone, has been for a year, but in those few minutes, he thinks that maybe there is a way that Steph is actually watching over them. 

After all, aliens are real.

The second year, it rains. But that doesn’t stop him from going out and watching over the city. A part of him feels like he has to, like if he stops moving long enough to acknowledge everything that’s happened, he’s going to come apart at the seams. The storms block out the stars that year, and Tim remembers his sentimentality from the previous November. 

Thunder rumbles, lightning cracks across the sky, and he thinks that it’s fitting, for all that has happened this year. He’ll never give a voice to his thoughts on these nights, they’re too personal, but that year he thinks maybe this is Steph disapproving of them, of the fact that they lost Damian.

•••••

Bruce is gone, just before that first anniversary, but the second is madness. They’re all still reeling from Damian’s death, and this is the first year that Bruce is around to stare at the case in the cave on the anniversary. He’s darker than normal, punches harder, and he doesn’t want to stop until the day is over, gone completely, and November 25th has taken its place. 

If he refuses to talk to anyone except to grumble orders, and avoids the Justice League, well… it’s nobody’s business anyway.

He’d promised to make the world brand new and take the time for his blonde sidekick, but so much got lost, and the world spins madly on. 

•••••

The first year, Alfred spends the morning dusting the room Stephanie had used in the manor. Her old things, textbooks, pictures, a domino that definitely shouldn’t have made it upstairs, are all in the same place they were the night she went out to find Sionis on her own. 

He can’t bring himself to change it, to close the textbook that’s print is starting to fade from the sunlight that comes through the window. Instead, he straightens her bedding and fluffs the pillows, before taking a seat at the desk and staring at one of the pictures of Steph with all of his boys. 

The wound of losing Bruce is so fresh it still bleeds, and Jason will barely speak to anyone in the family. Dick is startlingly quiet on this day, and Tim is bound and determined to throw himself into work. Like if he tries hard enough, he can pass the day without even having to think about Steph. The butler can’t find it in himself to blame the boy, as Steph had been his first love, but he wished someone who knew her would say something. 

Anything. 

She was practically his granddaughter, and now she and Bruce are gone to a place that Alfred knows he cannot follow, not when everyone still needs him.

Alfred pours himself a strong drink once he knows everyone is home safe, his eyes have been red all day, although no one asks why. He toasts the darkness, and prays that wherever Stephanie Brown’s soul may be, that she is at peace.

One the second anniversary, it’s clear that Alfred doesn’t approve of how Bruce seems to be trying to run himself into the ground that day, but he doesn’t say anything. The older man barely sets foot in the Cave on the 24th, but he’s there when dawn breaks on the 25th to help pick up the pieces.

He watches the stars from the window seat in her old room, and it’s like the whole world is moving, and he is standing still. The world spins madly on.

•••••

Damian walks around, ignorant, wondering why the others are so cagey on that day. No one has the heart to tell him what happened, and so he spends most of his time alone. He catches Alfred coming from a room that’s been forbidden to him, and once he knows the butler has gone downstairs, Damian goes in anyway. 

He needs to know what has everyone so off kilter, beyond Bruce’s death. What he finds is a room in pristine condition, and pictures of a girl that he knows. Really and truly, knows her better than he thought almost anyone else did, but he can’t say anything. He cannot reveal that his mother’s second most prized possession, behind himself, is a girl that apparently had a room in the Wayne family manor. 

So Damian keeps it a secret, it’s not like anyone will talk to him about her anyway, and whatever had led to this blonde coming into his mother’s care, she didn’t know exactly what it was either. No, Stephanie was safe with Mother. 

Whoever this girl was that the others mourn looks as though she would act a lot more rambunctious than the one that he knew. Damian liked his Stephanie, as off putting as she could sometimes be. When they were clear, her blue eyes shone, and when they were green, she was usually standing in front of him to protect him.

He would let the others have their memories, just as he had his of a blonde fighter. Damian wouldn’t be around for the next anniversary anyway, and the world spins madly on.

•••••

Come the third anniversary, no one really thinks about it, because Steph is back. Of course, that’s a lie, subconsciously they find themselves a little subdued, a little more tense in that week.

Stephanie herself seems to be coiled so tightly that she’ll burst at any moment. Instead, she disappears. She sets out to avoid the family like the plague, and she’s succeeding because a trained assassin that was raised in Crime Alley can disappear if she wants to. 

Damian saw how green her eyes were before she left, the taught lines of her muscles, but he doesn’t say anything, because what could he possibly do. Instead, he ignores the initial questions on that god-forsaken day about whether or not he’d seen her. He’s worried that she’s going to kill someone, like they used to do in the old days of training. He worries because he knows that she’s not fully in control, not at times like these. But, if bodies start turning up in the city, on today of all days, Damian will lie through his teeth to protect her.

No bodies do turn up and everyone else’s patrols go smoothly, no sign of a blonde on a warpath. He knows they’re worried about her, mostly about if the past will somehow find a way to repeat itself. It doesn’t matter that the Black Mask has been dead for nearly as long as Stephanie has been returned to the land of the living.

When Damian returns to his room after patrol, he opens his windows, grabs a sketchbook, and waits. He takes his time, sketching out Alfred the Cat and Titus’s sleeping forms. He knows she’ll come, she always has before, and he’ll be there with distractions in hand until the green fades into the usual pools of blue.

Steph woke up, and knew that she was supposed to be dead. It was a fact she lived with every day, that whatever this was, it was some sort of borrowed time. She vowed not to let that go in some unremarkable way, as she thought of the girl she’d once been, and where she’d gone. And the world spins madly on. 

•••••

The family falls apart, and puts themselves back together again, and the world spins madly on.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr at haljordangreenjedi :)


End file.
